3 Jurisdiction Arguments to Undermine 'Bauman'

Until recently, defendants rarely challenged a court’s exercise of general personal jurisdiction, because doing “substantial business” in a state was widely held sufficient to confer general jurisdiction over a defendant (and large corporate defendants do substantial business in most states). The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year in Daimler AG v. Bauman changed this calculus dramatically. Doing “substantial business” is no longer sufficient to confer general jurisdiction. Instead, the Supreme Court made clear that general jurisdiction over a corporation will lie only in states in which the corporation is essentially “at home,” which in all but exceptional cases is limited to (1) the corporation’s state of incorporation; and/or (2) its principal place of business.